


Ghosts of the past will never leave you

by Ineke (ANightingaleInAGoldenCage)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Community: HPFT, Gen, I don't know how to tag this, and some dealing w all the prison shit, and we can always use more rosa and jake friendship, i think, it's about her friendship w jake, it's friendship though!, the jake/amy is also like really minor but there?, this is mostly a rosa character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 07:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17824091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANightingaleInAGoldenCage/pseuds/Ineke
Summary: Sometimes things you thought you'd dealt with and moved on from, have a way of sneaking back up to you. Luckily, there are always people who can understand.





	Ghosts of the past will never leave you

**Author's Note:**

> Paula, a friend of mine, wanted to see a Rosa/Jake friendship fic so here we are! This one's for you!

Rosa was the first to admit that she didn’t do emotions. It made her feel weak, vulnerable, uncomfortable, and those were all emotions she didn’t know what to do with it. It wasn’t made better when people, with whatever good intentions they had, tried to help her out, because that made her feel even worse, and nope, she was absolutely not doing that. And so she had learned to put up a front. Keep people at bay. Keep work-life and private life completely separate, so she could keep things separate, and not have to deal with the drama of one part of her life within the other. It was a way of coping, unhealthy maybe, but working for her nonetheless, as it gave her the idea that everything was still, or could be, normal. And she could definitely appreciate that. 

It all got a bit blurred when she started at the Nine-Nine. It was inevitable, really, what with working with Charles Boyle, who was way too much into everyone’s personal lives as it was (though, luckily for her, more into Jake’s life than into hers. But that could also be attributed to the fact that Boyle was probably afraid of her), and Jake Peralta, who had gone to the academy with her. Still, Jake, for however much he trusted her and she him, didn’t know much about her and knew that, however much he would pry, he wouldn’t get anything out of her. It didn’t stop him from trying from time to time, and while she sometimes wanted to punch him for that, she also knew that whatever information he did have about her, he wouldn’t share if he could help it. She could trust him, and that was already more than what Rosa could say for most of the people in her life.

And of course, there had been Marcus, where things had become really uncomfortable to the point that she had to get more personal with Holt than she ever wanted to be in her life, but that part of her life would never be spoken of ever again.

Still, even through all of that, and the fact that she came to trust all of them more and more, she didn’t become emotional. They still kept their distance whenever she got angry - which was just the way she liked it. It was a balance that suited her.

And it all changed when she and Jake got send to prison for a crime they did not commit.

Those eight weeks were the hardest she ever had to endure. She kept up a tough front, tried to get Holt and Terry to act normal, for fucks sake, trying to grasp for any sense of normalcy she could grab at. Because she missed it, longed for it, but didn’t know how to ask for it except in a roundabout way. Even when she got released, she kept up a front. Trying not to show how fucking happy she was to be out of that hell-hole. Trying not to show how damaged she was through all of that, did her work as normal, didn’t complain when she had been put on desk-duty even though it didn’t last nearly as long as it did for Jake - even before he got so erratic and frenzied and wanting to get out in the field that he basically forced a clearance before he was ready for it and volunteered to go back to desk-duty. 

Even when alone with Jake, the one person who could understand what they had been through, they didn’t speak about it. Drank in silence, talked about anything and everything that didn’t have to do with those weeks whenever they did talk. It was their way of coping. And maybe it was unhealthy, sure. But Rosa also knew that Jake had Amy and if anyone was able to get Jake to talk about it, or comfort him in just the way he needed, she knew it was her. But even still Rosa didn’t have the words to tell Amy just how much it meant to her that she could be that person for Jake. That it made her emotional, just a tiny bit, and how much she actually wished she had that support herself.

So she kept quiet and moved on. 

It all changed again much later. After the nine-nine found out she was bi. After the entire fucked up mess with how her parents reacted to it. After she let them all in her life more - though still while keeping her distance, because she was still Rosa. After that day where she went into an active shooter situation, and found out the entire nine-nine had been on edge all day, trying to help her, and actually hugging her when she got back, not even caring one bit that all of them had gotten emotional. After the marriage of Jake and Amy. All later than that.

It had started as a normal day. Rosa had gotten to work, did her work, threatened to maim Boyle if he didn’t stop making that god-awful dish that he was making that she was sure would give the entire goddamn precinct food-poisoning from the smell alone (and she was absolutely not having that thank you very much), and had then gone to prison to get some information from someone who was jailed there. Standard business.  
She had gone into prison and walked out at the same pace she always had done. She had ignored Melanie Hawkins who was in the room tending to a visitor (though who would visit her was a goddamn mystery to Rosa). She had done well. She had gotten the information she needed. She had drank at Shaw’s with the rest of the squad after their shift and went home after that. Because she was not affected at all. Nope. Not really.

Of course, she had noticed that Jake had been a tad worried about her, if his glances her way had been any indication. But he still hadn’t acted out of the ordinary for him, didn’t treat her like she was made of fucking glass otherwise, and had bantered with the rest of them like nothing was amiss. And it wasn’t, because she was Rosa and she had dealt with it. Like she dealt with everything else.

Except, as she realized that night when she was at home and just couldn’t sleep because the face of Hawkins would not leave her mind, and all the thoughts she had thought to have thrown out, had all resurfaced, Jake knew her better than everyone else in the precinct, and was way too perceptive for his own good when he wanted to be. Because she wasn’t okay. And before she knew it, she had send a text message off to Jake, simply saying You up? despite the fact that it was 3 am and that he obviously would not be up.

Cursing herself for that moment of weakness, she threw her mobile to the other side of her bed, groaning in her pillow and wishing she could unsend it all. After all, what was she thinking? Before she got even more time to entertain those thoughts and before the urge to fucking set fire to something rose too far to be ignored, her phone went off next to her.  
‘’Sup,’ Jake’s sleepy voice said the second she answered the phone. Resisting the urge to just hang up and leave it be, Rosa took a deep breath before sighing.   
‘Nothing. It’s nothing. This is stupid. Go back to bed, Jake.’ Rosa rubbed her eyes, hating herself for not being able to open up or fucking tell what was bothering her.  
‘Nope. I did not get out of bed as carefully as possible as to not wake up Amy at three am for you, just for it to be nothing, Diaz,’ Jake said. ‘Look. I won’t make you talk. I’ll happily stay on the phone with you just saying nothing until you fall asleep if that’s what you need, Rosa. But whatever you say - this isn’t nothing. We both know that.’ Rosa didn’t say anything. She hated that the annoying part was that he was right, and that he wouldn’t let up because of it all. It made her emotions all conflicting and she hated it. She just wished it could be simple again so she could stop feeling weak.   
‘Just - what do you need, Rosa?’ The problem was that she didn’t know what she needed, except for it to all go away but she was rational enough to know that she couldn’t wish it away. It all sucked.  
‘Do you think there will ever be a moment when we can just move past it and not have all those fucked up brought back whenever we need to go back or come across something like this?’ she asked instead, perhaps a bit bluntly, but still not specifying what she was asking as it was. But then, it was Jake, she didn’t need to be specific for him to understand what she was going on about.  
‘No,’ he said, quicker than she expected him to react. But he probably had had loads of talks with Amy about it all.   
‘But it will get easier. Eventually. Or so they say.’ He laughed, but she could hear that it was a humorless one. ‘I honestly don’t know. I think it might have gotten easier. But at the same time I don’t. I’m sorry, this isn’t helping much.’ Rosa sighed.  
‘’s fine. I get it.’ It was all conflicted and fucked up and yet she knew what he meant.   
‘Amy says this makes us better cops. Because we’re more compassionate. Think twice. Holt agrees. I’m not sure but. Still. You handled it well today, Rosa.’ Rosa couldn’t help but snort. If she did handle it well, then she wouldn’t be up in the middle of the night calling Jake.  
‘Don’t pretend that you didn’t. Honestly, I would’ve been a mess all day.’ Rosa doubted that, but she wasn’t going to argue.   
‘Thanks, Jake,’ she said instead. Whether she believed it or not, it still meant a lot that he said it to her. That he thought she handled it well. It brought the hint of a smile to her face that hadn’t been there in god knew how long.   
‘’s nothing,’ he said. Rosa rubbed her eyes again and sighed.  
‘I think I’m going to try and sleep again,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ She didn’t want to drag the conversation on for longer than it needed to, plus she knew he needed the sleep as well.  
‘Okay. See you tomorrow,’ Jake said.  
‘Yeah. See you,’ she answered, before hanging up and throwing the phone beside her again. She needed to try and sleep. 

Sleep wasn’t something that came easily, but it did came faster than she thought it would. In the end, she only had about four hours of sleep that night, but she had dealt with worse, and thus she showed up at work that morning with the largest cup of coffee she could buy and threw herself in her chair, before starting to work. Jake and Amy followed not too long after her, Jake looking a bit more tired than he usually did, but chipper nonetheless, but aside from a nod in her direction in acknowledgement, and a sympathetic smile from Amy, they didn’t say anything and acted like nothing was wrong. Rosa hid a slight smile of herself because of this in her cup of coffee, happy that she had a friend like Jake. 

There wasn’t anyone else she’d rather have gone to jail with.


End file.
